


for a memory (and a quiet lie)

by lovelit



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24166435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelit/pseuds/lovelit
Summary: Giovanni gives him a moment, as much as he doesn’t expect the boy to speak first, and then breaks the silence himself.“You know, when I went looking for what had become of the brat who took down my organization, I hardly expected to find that he’d be hiding out alone on a mountain.”
Relationships: Red/Sakaki | Giovanni
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	for a memory (and a quiet lie)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moon_Blitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moon_Blitz/gifts).



He finds the boy atop a mountain. Intentionally, that is - the former leader of Team Rocket does not make a habit of climbing random mountains - but still, in its own way, unexpectedly. He had looked into Red’s whereabouts after losing to that other brat, yes, and what small threads he’d been able to find had pointed him towards Mt. Silver, but it hadn’t truly seemed like a reasonable trail until the moment that he reaches the summit and sees that figure standing atop a rock, staring off into the sunset with the ever-present little scrap of yellow fur clinging to his shoulder.

The sight sparks something that Giovanni cannot put words to. In their few interactions, the boy had never seemed the type to be overly comfortable with the kind of fawning attention that allowing himself to be truly outed as Rocket’s downfall and the Champion both would have netted him, and it’s no true surprise that few people Giovanni had spoken to can truly put a name or a face to the rumors. But he’d always assumed, in as much as he’d thought about it before seeking the boy out, that he must have at least a few people close to him whose company he would have kept if he chose to end his journeying. He _does_ have those people, as far as Giovanni’s investigations had turned up, including the boy who now owns Giovanni’s own gym.

And yet here he is, living alone on a mountain. Giovanni knows why _he’s_ spent the past three years living alone in a cave, but the realization that the boy - the hero, to the masses - who’d toppled his organization has apparently spent those years in much the same manner is— 

He shakes away that line of thought abruptly. _You’re growing sentimental in your old age, Giovanni_.

To distract himself, he steps forward, close enough that the crunch of his shoes through the snow has the boy’s Pikachu turning its head to look at him, its cheeks beginning to spark warily as it recognizes him. Red turns around himself a moment later, staring at Giovanni and then only placing a hand on the Pikachu’s back and waiting there, silent, until Giovanni comes close enough to be caught up in those piercing eyes.

Giovanni gives him a moment, as much as he doesn’t expect the boy to speak first, and then breaks the silence himself.

“You know, when I went looking for what had become of the brat who took down my organization, I hardly expected to find that he’d be hiding out alone on a mountain.”

Red’s gaze slides abruptly away from his own, and the boy reaches up to pick his Pikachu off of his shoulder and hold it close to his chest, instead.

“…I’m not hiding.”

There’s a sullen turn to his mouth that Giovanni focuses on, one that makes him wonder whether Viridian’s newest gym leader has accused Red of the same. The thought is an amusing one, no matter how he might still feel about this life for a boy who ought to be so much more, if only to soothe Giovanni’s own pride.

“Oh?” He takes a step closer and watches the way Red’s Pikachu twitches in the boy’s arms at his proximity. “Why _are_ you up here, then? It’s hardly a life befitting the real Champion or, for that matter, the person who single-handedly took down - what were we? - ‘the violent criminals who plagued Kanto for years’.”

Red spears Giovanni with his gaze again, expression unreadable, and then lets out a huffing breath that fogs out in the ever-decreasing light.

“…come with me,” he says, and Giovanni can hear the rasp of disuse in Red’s voice now that he’s spoken a little more, recognizable from how his own had sounded not so long ago. “It’ll be too cold to be out here, soon.”

He follows Red off of the summit agreeably enough, letting the boy lead him down into a large cave, well-hidden enough that he’d missed the entrance entirely on his way up the mountain. It’s set up far more comfortably than where he’d spent his own last few years - the advantage of having people potentially willing to bring one supplies, he supposes, not to mention the ability to enter towns without potentially risking arrest - and he’d almost class it as homely, if he weren’t still hung up on its inhabitant. The boy’s Charizard slumbers against one rough-hewn wall, a particularly large specimen that opens one eye and rumbles disagreeably at the sight of Giovanni, but settles immediately when Red snaps his fingers at it without looking.

Well. At least it’s reassuring to confirm that the boy who took down his entire organization at least has a particularly well-trained team, and it wasn’t just some sort of awful luck.

There’s a table off to one side with two chairs, and Giovanni settles himself on one of them to watch the boy as he fusses about with a camping stove, acting for all the world as if Giovanni isn’t there. At least until he glances back at him and says, voice guarded, “You won’t be getting off the mountain at night unless you have a Psychic-type, so I have stew if you want it.”

It’s more thoughtful than he’d have expected from a former enemy, and throws Giovanni enough that it takes a moment before he manages to nod and murmur a vague agreement. Red doesn’t seem to think anything of it, though, and just nods and turns back to what he’s doing.

He comes over to the table soon enough, setting a bowl in front of Giovanni and then settling down warily into the chair across from him. He holds his own bowl close to his chest as he starts to eat, rather than putting it down, and there’s something almost endearingly feral-looking about it and the way he keeps glancing up at Giovanni through his hair. Like watching a Pokemon that’s still half-wild.

It does make him seem to fit in better on top of a mountain, if nothing else, though Giovanni couldn’t say for certain whether Red has always been this way.

The meal passes without either of them speaking, Giovanni simply inspecting Red - less obviously than the boy keeps watching him, to be sure - until they’re both finished and Red grabs both bowls, turning away from the table from them. He’s clearly trying to keep busy to prevent any in-depth conversation, and the heavy-handedness of his attempts is almost charming. It won’t be _successful_ , but it’s almost charming.

“You never answered my question,” Giovanni prompts, when he’s tired of letting Red think he might have forgotten, and watches his shoulders tense up across the cave. “What _is_ Kanto’s favorite boy hero doing up here?”

“I’m not.”

Giovanni arches a brow at the quiet declaration. “Not what, boy?”

There’s silence for a moment, and then Red puts down whatever he’d been fiddling with and turns to face him. “I’m not a hero.”

“I suspect most of Kanto would disagree, wouldn’t they? You single-handedly ended my team’s ‘reign of terror’. Certainly, Johto seems to be treating the boy who took down the last stragglers over there as some sort of perfect hero, and from what I gather he also had rather more help than yourself.”

Red blinks at that assertion - perhaps he hasn’t heard about the brat in Johto yet, given that gossip presumably travels fairly slowly to the top of a remote mountain - and then just looks away. He looks as though he’s thinking hard, and after a long pause he sighs, heavy and shuddering like he’s expelling something from the depths of his being.

“I didn’t care about most of what you were doing.”

It’s said with a weight to it, and Giovanni frowns, leaning back in his chair. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that… I cared when Rockets were stealing from little kids, and I’d have stopped anyone who was killing Pokemon like they did in Lavender. But mostly, people just asked me to do something, and I didn’t have any reason not to, or I was just there and Rockets thought I wanted to stop them, or they tried to steal from me and I didn’t let them.” He’s still not looking at Giovanni, and in contrast to his usual quiet, the words come out of him all in a rush, his voice rasping in his throat with the effort of speaking so much. It’s fascinating to watch, to be the audience for what’s clearly the boy’s heartfelt confession.

“I’m not a hero,” he carries on. “They all think I stopped Team Rocket because I had such perfect morals and hated crime so much, or whatever it is they’re saying after this long, but sometimes I didn’t even stop Rockets from stealing or get things back from them even when I _could_ have, if it was just material things or if they took Pokemon from people who seemed like they didn’t treat the Pokemon well. Strangers think I’m some kind of hero, but if you guys had just done those things then I wouldn’t have _cared_.” He finally falls silent again, breathing hard, and it takes a moment for Giovanni to fully process it.

And then he barks out a laugh, abrupt and loud in the quiet of the cave.

It makes Red whip his head back around to look at him again, and he opens his mouth to say something. He’s cut off by Giovanni standing and moving swiftly over to him, though, and ends up just letting out a barely-breathed _what?_ as he stares up at him.

Giovanni catches the boy’s chin in his hand and inspects his face, watching Red’s brows knit into a frown at the contact. He doesn’t pull away from it, though, even as a fine tremor runs through his body that makes Giovanni wonder how many weeks or months it’s been since he last had any kind of physical contact from another human.

“Are you telling me,” Giovanni begins, and when he speaks it has Red darting his eyes from side to side as though he might happen on an escape route, “That all I needed to keep you from single-handedly decimating Team Rocket was _better organizational discipline_ with regards to the well-being of children and Pokemon?”

That makes Red actually make eye contact, his own eyes wide and startled as he stares up into Giovanni’s.

“…something like that,” he manages eventually, the words hesitant and sounding like he’s halfway to strangling them before they can escape his mouth.

Giovanni can’t quite help but to laugh again, softer this time.

“And you could have been Team Rocket’s favorite morally dubious idealist, I suppose, rather than the region’s favorite hero of justice,” he murmurs, closing his eyes to let the boy have an escape from the pinning eye contact as he bends in close enough to lean his forehead against Red’s and listening to the little intake of breath that the contact prompts. 

He stays there a few moments, eyes closed, before he finally opens them. Red’s own eyes are still wide and staring at him, close enough that Giovanni can see the individual traces of brown in the gray of his irises, and the boy’s hesitant breaths just barely ghost over his face as he stands there and tolerates it until, slowly, Giovanni breaks the contact and straightens up again. He stays in close to Red, though, although he finally lets go of the boy’s chin as he stares down at him.

“Well,” he says, eventually. “Your secret is safe with me, boy.”

He pauses, watching the way Red sags in relief as though the word of a known criminal against his character would have even meant anything, and then adds, “And if you find yourself wanting to descend the mountain, know that - even without the backing of my former organization behind me - I could appreciate that idealism of yours in the right settings, as well.”

(He won’t spin visions of them working together in the middle ground between Red’s idealism and Giovanni’s cynicism, at least not tonight, but from the look that Red pins him with he suspects, perhaps, that he won’t need to.)


End file.
